Things to consider before «escaping» the United States as a Leftist
Maldito País
octubre 30, 2025
CNN headlines read “These Americans are done with Trump, so they are leaving America,” and Democracy Now reports that “Anti-Fascism Scholar Flees U.S. Fearing for His Family’s Safety Amid Trump’s ‘Antifa’ Fearmongering”. As these headlines become more common, the media has even created a new social category, “Trump Refugees” or “Trumpugees,” in short, describing mostly liberal communities that express -sometimes real, sometimes imagined- danger of living in the United States. The mainstream adoption of these conversations signals that the current political situation in the US is forcing many to consider their options and plan for alternatives.
We, at Hora Cero, as leftist immigrants, and many who are currently in exile, who had to leave their home country in Nicaragua, and some who have spent several years living in the United States, We’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to “escape” and leave a community behind. Many of us were lucky to find shelter in Mexico, and we have several friends from the United States who are asking for advice on how to do it. Here are some things to consider as you start planning for alternatives.
Leftist migration to the global south
Historically speaking, perhaps the United States has never been a safe place for leftists, people of color, or queer communities. It’s easy to feel the legacy of McCarthyism, the Red Scare, the Green Scare, and countless political assassinations of organizers and activists. As Ta-Nehisi Coates patiently explains to Ezra Klein, targeted violence, harassment, and institutional roadblocks have always been a reality of the Black radical organizing tradition; it is not something new.
In this context, many people have had no choice but to find refuge in the US, in strong communities tied together through struggle, never giving up on building a better future for all. But others, like Assata Shakur, and those organizing for Pan-Africanism have found refuge in Cuba and northern Africa.
In a way, escaping to the global south has been a part of the left’s imagination for centuries. Beginning in the 1800s and accelerating in the 1900s, European anarchists, socialists, and communists sought a new life, escaping from world wars, fascism, and authoritarianism. Hundreds of thousands found safety in Latin America, revealing how immigration has always been an essential part of leftist organizing.
The lesson here is that you need good organizing on both sides of the border. It is hard to figure it out on the way. Across the United States, hundreds of pro-immigrant organizations support this infrastructure, and several exist in the global south as well.
Closer to the United States, Mexico seems to be the left’s “plan B”, as sometimes found in contemporary leftist literature, seen in the speculative fictions of Crimethinc, and most recently, movies like One Battle After Another, where we find some of our protagonists finding shelter across the border. Places like Mexico have been a country that has historically welcomed exiled communities, and Mexican history itself is a story led by people in exile, just look at Jose Marti, Trotsky, and Sandino.
Mexico is close to our hearts because many of us live here, and a significant number of our Nicaraguan friends have been able to build a future, despite xenophobia against Central Americans, endless bureaucratic labyrinths, and low wages. Even now, with the rise of right-wing fascist political parties in Europe, a lot of our colleagues exiled in Germany are considering Mexico. This land feels like the safest option, and it’s a little bit closer to Nicaragua.
Gentrification and Relocation Services
There is a big difference between people migrating for protection and people migrating for profit. There are obvious political differences between “expats”, “immigrants”, and “exiles”. There are clear privileges offered to people in the global north that people from the global south cannot afford. These categories need to be understood through the lens of class and geography, where just having a United States passport can make a drastic difference. Every act of migration is political and has political consequences.
During the pandemic, the idea of “escaping the US” became more common. A lot of people, particularly older and white, who felt oppressed at the idea of having to wear a mask, sought lower COVID-19 restrictions and relocated to places like Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Tulum, and Ciudad de México. In Nicaragua, Canadian anti-vaxers claiming to be escaping “Trudeau’s fascism” can now be found buying beachfront properties in San Juan del Sur.
Now, there is an entire “social media influencer sphere” in which travel influencers show their followers what their lives are like in other countries like Vietnam, Spain, Japan, and Berlin. These influencers, mostly earning in US dollars, celebrate their Instagram-friendly lifestyle, sometimes stressing that you don’t even need to know the local language to get by.
This new industry is taking shape, taking advantage of rising costs of living in Canada and the United States. Real estate agents provide “relocation services” offering comfortable logistics for boomer, Gen X, and millennial “expats” who want to retire to Mexico and be surrounded by a like-minded community. You find these services widely spread on social media, public WhatsApp and Telegram groups, and even in popular travel magazines.
Other services, seen for example in Merida, Yucatán, coach these “winter birds” on how to use their social security fund to flip houses or apartments and turn them into Airbnbs. Promising passive income and always having a nice place to live when escaping the Canadian winter. This migrating upper mostly class applying for an economic solvency visa needs to provide bank statements detailing an average monthly balance of over $73,000 USD and a monthly income of over $4,300 USD per month. These relocating agents guarantee “friendly communities”, “affordable attractions”, and “peace and tranquility”, all subsidized by low wages covered by local Mexicans.
For other crowds, being pushed out by gentrification in the United States and realizing they can stretch their profit margins, have continued to gentrify neighborhoods, places like Oaxaca and Ciudad de México, where, according to the Programa General de Ordenamiento Territorial de la Ciudad de México, state that over 20,000 local families are displaced per year, due to a lack of affordable housing.
All of these different communities employ different justifications for leaving the United States. Most are trying to maximize their purchasing power in the face of a more expensive standard of living at home. All concluding in a new version of the American Dream that takes shape: you will never be able to afford a house, healthcare, start a business, or find peace in the United States, but you can now do it all outside of the United States.
These mainstream scenarios are the ones most readily available and imaginable for people considering escaping the United States. We can immediately tell that this is not a realistic possibility for all, and actually end up perpetuating imperialism abroad.
What does the Latin American Left think about all this?
Consequently, on the left, there is no real consensus on how to welcome leftist communities escaping the US. Local progressive organizations recognize that foreigners gentrifying neighborhoods is just a symptom of a larger systemic issue that has turned housing into a commodity. There is a clear rejection of systems that promote gentrification, imperialism, and class division. Here, the message is clear: don’t come.
But we feel like the concern for welcoming comrades from the United States has not been widely discussed.
One opinion can be found all the way back in Che Guevara, who stated that he was “jealous” of American comrades, because they had the privilege of organizing from within and on the frontlines of the empire. This stance can also be found in most Sandinista guerrillas, who were constantly asked what the best thing Americans could do to support the Sandinista Revolution. All stating the same thing: Change your government from within. “The United States is the largest global threat to peace. If you want to support third-world revolutions, you can start by rising against your own US government.”
Other versions can be found in Trotskyist-inspired organizing in Mexico and South America, where there’s a clear international edge in fighting oppression, and supporting exiled communities is part of their everyday practice. From another perspective, the Zapatistas, who have survived thanks to international solidarity, welcome communities to learn about the Zapatista struggle, to connect this struggle with their own issues at home, and to visit and support Zapatista efforts and campaigns. This political strategy is celebrated as one of the first to be truly globalized and internationalist supported.
For these leftists, the problem is global and the strategy is obvious. We must be strategic and fight against capitalism and imperialism, from wherever one is. You cannot escape it. You can retreat, find shelter, but still actively organize to prevent imperialism from where you stand. Relocate, but prevent imperialism from happening again. In this sense, retreating is less escaping but more a shifting of front lines.
This is all a contentious topic in the recently consolidated Nicaraguan diaspora, which we belong to.
Back in 2019, when thousands of Nicaraguans were fleeing to Costa Rica and the United States, there was a message circulating that the best thing that new immigrants can do is to behave and be civil. Prominent oppositional figures would encourage these newly established communities not to get involved in local politics and instead show that Nicaraguans are good law law-abiding citizens deserving of humanitarian protection.
This “don’t bite the hand that feeds you” mentality at times felt at odds, considering the rising fascism in the United States, and many Nicaraguans fled authoritarianism just to enter a different one. The goal of the leftist Nicaraguan diaspora should always be to prevent Orteguismo from rising in the United States and to prevent Trumpismo from rising in Nicaragua.
More profoundly, the leftist tradition of communities in exile has always been politically motivated.
Historically, communities of exiles and diasporas have participated in general strikes, formed unions, started newspapers, protested, and fought to improve the conditions of all, even as immigrants in a new country. Latin American oligarchs thought that Europeans would finally bring “enlightenment” and “superior civilization” to the Americas; instead, they brought socialism, anarchism, and labor organizing. For these communities, the question was, what happens next? What do we do now? What can we learn from each other? We are safer, we have some stability, and now we have to keep fighting so that these evils don’t spread and happen again.
International Solidarity
We apologize for the clickbait title of this piece. So allow us to correct it, the question is not “should I escape the United States?” The question is, rather, “from what front lines do I wish to fight from?”, One thing is right: it is a lot harder to fight if we are imprisoned or murdered.
This is an invitation from leftists in the United States to consider their options, to understand the playing field, and to be strategic. We are part of a centuries-long struggle for justice and reparations. Where do you fit in? What needs to be learned? Who are the most vulnerable? What connections need to be made? How do we build networks of support and care internationally? And how do we do this responsibly in another land?
More specifically, this becomes a concern, less about individual responsibility and more about international solidarity. How can US leftists support the building of international solidarity networks, in a way to keep the fight against Trumpism and fascism alive?
What is the structural state of US solidarity with the Global South?
There are hundreds of historical examples of solidarity networks between the United States and Latin America. For decades, many internationalist delegations supported revolutions in Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Brazil. These efforts were led by students, academics, organizers, and workers.
Nevertheless, some aspects that might prevent the building of international solidarity could be illiteracy about Latin American history, organizing, and leftist movements. Other issues can be “American exceptionalism”, where armchair activists quickly insult popular uprisings as color revolutions, as if American leftists hold the authority to decide what struggles are legitimate and what struggles are not. For years, these attitudes have hindered necessary bonds of support for those who have needed it the most.
To confront these attitudes, we ask: what can the United States and Latin America learn from each other?
Latin America has a vibrant and sophisticated feminist, indigenous, and socialist movement. We have survived through CIA coups, military dictatorships, and economic sanctions, and we continue to organize against mining companies, narcoviolence, and neoliberal authoritarians. Making barricades, occupying buildings, and resisting paramilitary forces are part of a common set of skills that everybody in the struggle knows how to do. The Latin American context can be a source of inspiration for U.S. leftists. Which might be useful against right-wing Christian nationalism.
So, returning to our question.
If you are considering joining the front lines in Mexico or anywhere outside the United States, for that matter, here are some things to consider:
Do you know the language? Do you know about local struggles? Are you familiar with the region’s history? Are you aware of the process, timelines, and paperwork required to relocate? Have you visited the area before? Do you have any friends in the region? Are you able to work remotely? Are you familiar with the healthcare network? Is your life in danger? In what ways will you continue to struggle for liberation? Is relocating really the best option? Do you know of people who have successfully fled? Are you planning on staying here legally or undocumented? Are you considering applying for asylum? Have you started to document threats against your life and your community? Do you currently support immigrants’ struggles in the United States?
The open-endedness of these questions reveals that we are always already too late to build internationalist solidarity networks. We wished there were easy answers and legitimate structures that could support the relocation of people out of danger. We must start somewhere. Internationalism is one more tool we must use in the fight against oppression everywhere.
